Placenta: It's What's For Dinner

Eating your placenta may seem odd, but it's something that has been practiced for hundreds of years all around the world. You may have even heard about it from a celebrity mom like January Jones, who encapsulated her placenta. Eating your placenta can help to prevent postpartum depression, speed up the healing process, increase milk production, help you sleep better, increase energy and much more. Before you decide to eat your placenta, make sure you talk to your doctor first and be sure that your hospital is willing to work with you on it.

Raw: Yes, you can eat it raw after it has been thoroughly cleaned. In fact, almost every mammal eats their own afterbirth and in that context, it isn't that strange to think that a human would, too. We just happen to be the top of the food chain so we can be a bit pickier about how it's done. After it's clean, most suggest to cut it into small pieces and eat them without chewing, rather like an oyster. This form of placenta is said to help the post-birth healing process immensely.

Encapsulation: There are services you can pay for to have your placenta dehydrated and made into pills in a vegetable-based capsule. This may the the least gross way of doing it, because you are fairly removed from the process and it's just like taking a daily vitamin. Read more about placenta encapsulation here.

Cook it: You can cook your own placenta. You can store it frozen until you are ready to eat it, but once it's prepared, you'll need to finish it off within a few days because it will go bad just like any other meat would.

If that is your plan, start by cleaning it. After it thaws, rinse until pink. Then cut away and remove the umbilical cord and membranes. After that, you can cook it any way you would a different meat. Steam, saute, boil, bake, roast etc. your placenta to culinary perfection. Just don't pull a Sweeney Todd and feed it to an unsuspecting person.

You can put it on top of a pizza as an extra topping, serve it as the layer of meat in your lasagna, top spaghetti along with sausage and grated cheese or serve it in pâté the way Chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall did on Channel 4 News in 1998.

Make a Smoothie: This is a bit easier to stomach than eating it completely raw. Blending up small pieces (after being cleaned) into a smoothie along with your favorite mixed berries and juices. You can use your favorite smoothie recipe, though we suggest you pick something with a strong enough flavor to mask the placenta taste.

Have you or would you ever eat your placenta? Share with us in the comments below!